


the rats and the flies and the corpses

by Serindrana



Series: i've seen the flash of teeth [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Bloodplay, M/M, Medical Trauma, violence as sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 08:03:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serindrana/pseuds/Serindrana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“When you see the rats and the flies and the corpses, Corvo, what do you feel? Are you horrified? Disgusted? Resigned? Does it turn your stomach?</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Or do you like it?"</i>
</p><p>Corvo is injured, and the Outsider takes the opportunity for a private chat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the rats and the flies and the corpses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lamprey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lamprey/gifts).



“Lie still, Corvo.”

His lips curl into a snarl and he jerks like a caged animal as Piero’s hand settle on his shoulder. Piero is weak, fragile, and for a moment he can feel his delicate bones cracking under his fingers. He takes a deep breath and makes himself go utterly still.

Piero tightens the leather straps holding him to the makeshift operating table. His shoulder throbs, his leg screams. His heart thuds in time with the surges of pain, and his head lolls back. It had been two guards who had taken him by surprise.  _Him_. It’s almost laughable. But they’re dead now, devoured by rats, and all that’s left of them are the shards of metal tearing apart his muscle and threatening the bone beneath.

“Mouth,” Piero says, and Corvo parts his lips to accept the strap of leather. “This is going to hurt,” Piero says, as if Corvo doesn’t already know.

And then he makes the first incision.

Corvo’s wounds are drenched in elixir and remedy, but neither can stop the pain. He howls from it, wordlessly, and a distant part of him hopes that Emily, in her tower far above, won’t be able to hear. The scalpel burns as it parts his flesh. Around him, equipment hums with whale oil. His eyes roll.

“You’re losing your touch,” Piero says, his voice cutting through the haze of agony. Corvo turns his head away. “You’re lucky they didn’t shatter your femur. What would you have done then, Corvo?”

Piero’s voice shifts as he speaks, his consonants and vowels rearranging themselves into new rhythms. They grow more and more familiar. His hand begins to burn.

The scalpel is removed. Searching fingers replace it, spreading the incision, digging out the shrapnel. His thoughts become only blinding white, then drop down into darkness.

“It was only a small potential,” Piero’s warped voice says, close to his ear. “I have seen it, though. You with a limp that grows painful with every winter, and with every year that passes with you on the run, or back in jail, every year that you mourn little Emily’s death. You came close to failing, Corvo, but it was only ever a small chance.”

Corvo’s eyes stay welded shut, but through their lids he can see a shadow leaning over him. His heart hammers out a raging, syncopated beat. Behind it he can hear his blood dripping onto the ceiling.

The fingers dig deeper into his torn flesh, until he’s sure they’ll touch bone. He arches and groans.

The Outsider says, “There is a chance, too, that our friend Piero will be struck with one of his brain fevers while working on you. He will lose control of his right hand. He will slash your femoral artery in an accidental spasm. And you will bleed out as Emily comes down to investigate who was howling a few minutes before. She will see you go still on the table. She will scream.”

Corvo stiffens, then works his lips and tongue until he can spit out the gag. “ _No_ ,” he says.

“There is a chance,” the Outsider repeats. Bits of metal clink against the table beneath him, slide through the blood running down his arm. The image of him resolves, even though Corvo’s eyes are still shut. The Outsider watches his face, unblinking, with his hollow eyes. “I can’t change that.

“Is Piero operating on me now?”

“Yes.” The Outsider’s hands slip from the wound. They are covered in blood that gathers where his rings meet his pale flesh. He wipes them on a nearby cloth. “I’m simply joining him for the moment.”

“He dreams of you,” Corvo rasps.

“He does. And more. I… help him. The brain fevers leave a way in.”

“He’s not marked.”

“Oh, he is,” the Outsider says, moving a hand to Corvo’s throat. His fingers curl loosely around it. Corvo’s pulse thrums against him. “If you were to take him apart, piece by piece, you would see that his every bone and sinew bears my mark. But he’ll never know that. He thinks himself mad, in the dark nights when I leave him not where I found him. He fears himself, and his dreams.

“Do you fear, Corvo?”

His hand lifts from his throat, and he begins to bathe the wound in Corvo’s shoulder. He threads a needle. The bite of it is sharp and shattering, and for a stretch of time, Corvo can’t think or breathe or speak.

The threads sliding through his skin pull him back. He turns his head from side to side.

“Do you fear me?”

The Outsider takes his chin and holds it firm, and leans in close enough that Corvo’s breath crashes against his lips like breakers on the shore. He opens his eyes.

Piero bends over him, checking his breathing.

He closes his eyes, and the Outsider stares into his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Corvo says.

The Outsider smiles, or seems to smile, and his heartbeat for just a moment is replaced with the roar of waves and surf, and the pain fades just a little. His arm is washed and bandaged.

And then the Outsider circles the table and reaches for his leg, scalpel in hand.

“When you see the rats and the flies and the corpses, Corvo, what do you feel? Are you horrified? Disgusted? Resigned? Does it turn your stomach?” His hands seem to trail along his skin like a lover’s, and his eyes never leave Corvo’s. A quick opening of his own eyes, a fluttering of his eyelids, reveals Piero looking intently at the wound.

The Outsider is superimposed on top of him, and in the darkness, Piero’s dirty workshop has disappeared. Around him he can see the endless vault of the Void. For a moment, it feels as if his lungs fill with water, flooding through every inch of his body, buoying it.

The knife bites into his skin and all the water of the oceans floods out with his blood. He shudders and shakes and sobs.

“Or do you like it, Corvo? Do you see it and think, yes, this is what the world deserves? The world killed your Empress, Corvo. And now it reaps its punishment, rotting from the inside as it tears itself asunder. Sometimes, you dream of the buildings crumbling to rubble, don’t you?”

“You’ve seen it.”

“No, but I can see it in your face,” the Outsider murmurs. “I can see it in your futures. I can see you take this city apart brick by brick and bone by bone, until there’s nothing left. Does that excite you, Corvo?”

“Emily,” he mumbles through thick and heavy lips. The blinding white of pain is threatening to take his words away from him again. He fights it.

“No, you never do those things in a world where she lives, this is true. Except… well. There are a few possibilities that waver like heat mirage. But Corvo… does your rage not shame you?”

“No,” he says, and the Outsider smiles wide, wider than any man could smile. His mouth seems to split open, revealing row after row of sharp teeth.

And then he is a man again, and the way he slips his finger into the path of the bullet is almost sexual. It’s violent and responsive and Corvo twitches and gasps for breath. His finger turns and crooks and Corvo is lost to riptides and ice-cold waters, the pressure and the dark bearing down on him until he forgets to breathe.

When he comes back to himself, his leg is bandaged and the room is just a room. Piero is only Piero, scribbling notes to himself at another table. The gag is back in his mouth, and feels as if it never left. His straps are undone.

Slowly, he sits up. His body is sore and tired and satisfied in a way he hasn’t felt in longer than he cares to think about.

He looks down at his hands. The mark seems to have spread. He curls his fingers into a fist, and below the surface of his skin he can see his veins standing dark against tendon and bone, stained with whatever unnatural ink lives in his flesh.

Piero looks up as Corvo stands. “Take it easy,” Piero says. “You went into shock, and lost consciousness. It will be awhile before you should walk.”

Corvo walks anyway.

He has to make sure Emily is okay.


End file.
